Animal Spirits Podcast - It Feels Like 1999 (EP. 433)

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

On episode 433 of Animal Spirits, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ discuss the melt-up phase of the AI boom, there is a bubble in bubble predictions, no one is going to call the top, hyperscalers vs. the labor market, international stocks are outperforming, Taylor Swift, junk stocks, the top 1% vs. the bottom 90% and more. This episode is sponsored by Betterment Advisor Solutions and Vanguard. Grow your RIA, your way by visiting: https://Betterment.com/advisors Learn more about Vanguard at: https://www.vanguard.com/audio Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thecompoundnews.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠A Wealth of Common Sense⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Michael Batnick’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Irrelevant Investor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's vanguard.com slash audio. All investing is subject to risk, Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Riddholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Riddholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben.

I am on the airplane this morning, taking off, got CNBC on the scene in front of me. Boom. Unmute? Yeah, I was working. Okay. And big headline. Open AI. Investing in AMD?

I was about to make a try. I couldn't think about it. So Open AI doing some sort of deal with AMD. Who cares what it is? Sam Altman tweeted excited to partner with AMD to use their chips to serve our users. This is all incremental to work to our work with Nvidia. And we plan to increase our Nvidia purchases over time. The world needs much more compute.

So AMD, Nvidia, you're still good. Stock is up 25% of the announcement. I don't know what's up right now. $280 billion company just adding $50 billion, whatever the number is. Everyone in the boat. Let's go. Let's go. It's bubble time.

Let's do it. Let's do it. The funny thing about this whole thing is just that the, it feels like there's not, I don't, I don't know if you, I guess you caught an oligopoly. Like, it feels like these, they have everything cornered, but they're all doing it together and being like, hey, we're inclusive. You come to take, you can take a little table scraps. Sure. Yeah, you want some too. Yeah, you too.

Intel. Where's Micron? They feel left out. Hey, so last week after our show, I thought to myself, you know, I thought to myself, you know, what, we're going to do a hyper-scaler-free episode. Let's just, it's enough. Come on. It's enough already. It's impossible. So you have this in here. I saw it too. I had CNBC on. I have my three screens in my office and I had CNBC on one and Paul Tudor Jones is on this morning. So I turned it on. And credit to Andy Ross Sork because he said, because Paul Tudor Jones said, listen, it feels like

99. And he said, I think he essentially said like this is, he said this is potentially more explosive than 1999. on. He was saying, like, listen, we're in for a blow off top here. And Andrew Ross Sorkin pulled up some old quotes of his. Like, last time you were here, you were talking about the end of the world. And you were talking about recessions. And Paul Turner Jones, like, kind of smiled. And he goes, yeah, you know, it's last time. But so I credited him for saying this because he's, he's been wrong like every hedge fund person. But he said, listen, I'll tell you on. Hang on. Hang on. He's been wrong like everybody. You don't have to signal that hedge up. Who's been right? Well, true. But so it was kind of funny. And he said,

listen, I've been wrong a lot. Okay. Everyone's wrong. And he said, but my whole investing philosophy boils down to the 200-day moving average. Yeah, he's been, he's been, quote, wrong. I'm sure he's made gazillions of dollars. So he's not like one of those pontificators that just bloviates and doesn't actually invest. Yeah, I think he's more of a quantitative investor that has, that has qualitative discussions sometimes. And he said, I use the 200-day moving average. When it's above the 200-day, good things happen.

When it's below the 200-day, bad things can happen. And last time I was here was below the 200-day, so I was thinking bad things are going to happen. Fair enough. And then it did. So, so I thought it was actually a pretty good back and forth. But so is this the point that we've reached is, is the next line of predictions is blow off top. All right. So I mentioned that I genuinely thought we were going to do an AI free episode.

It's just like tiresome at this point. We've got 55 pages in the dock. So apologies in advance. Is this, I'm thinking about this. Is this, this is the biggest market story of the last decade, right? Like there's been there's been pockets of time where all we're talking about is inflation. all we're talking about is interest. No, COVID was COVID.

Hang on, hang on. Wait, let me finish. Over time, that's COVID. But that was within the context of like a crisis. So absent crisis moments over the last 15 years, this is the single biggest market story and there's nothing even close. This is one of the biggest market stories that we will ever have. Correct.

This is going into the textbooks. All right. Didn't Michael Sembless say this is like this is the stock market bet of the century? Yeah. This is not like the biggest story of a decade. This is potentially the biggest story that it's crazy to say, but it seems true. All right. Here's where I'm at.

It feels like everybody is aligned. Okay. We are entering the next phase of a blow off top. Maybe it lasts a year. Maybe it lasts two years. So everyone's bullish in the short term, but everybody knows it's going to end badly. There's no way it's going to play out like that. It's just, there's no way, right?

No, that, that, but that is the. perfect hedge to make a prediction. The stock market is going to go out, but then it's going to fall. How can you be wrong in that scenario? You can't. Because if it falls, you go, I guess I was just a little early. Yeah, just really. You know.

On Monday a week ago, I sent you and Josh an image that I created from chat, CBT, where it's everybody watching a bubble inflate. And it really feels like this in the moment, right? Like, more so... How come every person in this AI-generated picture is the... exactly the same. Like, the women have the same face as the men. I don't know. They all have the same. Although, if you look back a few rows, it's a weird image. But Derek Thompson this week wrote an article. This is how the AI bubble will pop. He had an interview with Paul Kodroski.

And it's not just Derek. I mean, it's quite literally everybody. I made the point this morning on Twitter, there is a bubble in financial news stories using pictures of bubbles. Look at all the picture. Every picture now has a picture of a bubble in it. That's how you have to start the article. So chart kid Matt did this thing where he he showed that the stock market bottoms nine months on average before earnings do in a bear market. Right? So the stock market is for looking in a bare market. So I said, okay, that's great. What about the top? Is this, can the stock market call the peak in earnings before it happens? And we looked at it and it cannot. The stock market, look at this chart, the very first one here, the stock market and earnings basically fall

together. It's within, it's within, like, a few days. So, so the stock market is forelooking at the bottom. That makes sense. Like, from a human behavior point of view, because nobody wants to leave the party early. Yes. But so the, the thing is, no one is going to be able to predict this, this coming fall, not even the stock market. It's going to happen, like, when it happens. And I agree with you. It, it seems almost too easy to say, well, this is a bubble and it's going to pop like all the other ones. There. The market is never that easy. I mean, maybe, but it seems hard to believe. Yes.

Did you make this GIF of Derek Henry standing next to Mark Ingram? Oh, yeah. You did a meme, so I had to do it. It's one of my favorite meme templates. That's good. And it doesn't, it just seems like AI is subsuming everything else with the economy and with the stock market that you keep hearing about the slowing labor market. But guess what? The growth for this coming quarter is still projected to be almost 4%.

So, yes, people keep worrying about the labor market slowing. The stock market doesn't care. The economy doesn't care. When does it matter? Stalwart, Joe, Mr. Wiesenthal tweeted, according to the challenge of the pace of hiring has fallen off the cliff, weakest September for job creation since 2011. And it is a push and pull, as the pundits say. I don't know, man.

It'll matter when it matters. I have nothing like, I have no insight here. I think that's the thing. Like, nobody does. Let's just be honest. We're all making this up. We're all guessing the best we can. Yeah.

That's one of the things that makes these kind of manias fun because no one has a clue when it will end. Char from JP Morgan estimates the five major AI hyperscalers will spend a combined of $1.2 trillion from 0 from 25 through 27. How could you be bearish? I mean, you could say this. is stupid, and this will end badly, sure. I think everyone's saying that. But Martin Schrelli is shorting, I believe, some of the quantum computing stocks, which by all accounts,

there's nothing there. What are we taking investment advice from this guy now? Well, just hear me out. The Righetti CEO was... They need to change their name. It sounds like a pasta company. I got to be honest. I don't even, I have no. Is we're getting quantum computing? I genuinely don't know.

Sorry. Yeah, I think so. But I need to change their name. So he said, he was talking to Yahoo finance and he said, because of the hype that is going on in the quantum computing space and some erroneous statements are being made, including by people in our industry, we have to tamp down some expectations. I have to tell investors that it's still not the time to talk about sales. Not the time to talk about sales.

there's no revenue and sales growth because we are still very much in the technology development mode. So it's essentially an experiment. We have to get the technology perfected before we can start seeing real material difference in sales. And guess what? It doesn't matter. Stock's going straight up. So Schrelli is short. Obviously a lot of people are making on money the long side. I think here's where I'm at with like shorts and longs in this, in one corner of the of the mania that we're that we're experiencing. Nobody comes out alive. Shorts are going to get taken out just because that's just how the market got his work. They're not going to let you make money.

You're going to get margin called. It's just not going to be enough. And then it'll fall 90%. Well, did you read the Jerry Newman piece at Colossus a few weeks ago, basically said no one's going to make money in the AI bubble, right? I agree with trying to pick through the sort of the winners and losers at this point, beyond the hyper-scalers. I think Cittittittal will make money.

Right. Yes. The timing of the timing of the magnitude, that gets you every time. Listen, this, it's a huge. human experiment, though, that we're running here, right? That's the, that's what makes the stock market so endlessly fascinating to me, is that it's like a laboratory for human emotions. And how far can we push them? How far can they, can they really go? We're going to find out. Yeah. So, JPMorgan, and this is from JPMorgan via Bridgewater. U.S. real GDP growth contribution from tech

capex. So it's showing that versus contribution from the rest of the economy. And somebody tweeted, this is alarming, almost 40% of the U.S. real GDP growth last quarter was driven by tech CapEx. Agri-Cap-X can't keep climbing like this in the absence of real profits derived from AI investments. And somebody replied, this is a surface-level take. Most AI Cap-X is spending against current demand with revenue coming in immediately. Let's dig a little deeper. Both fair points.

But the unknown of where. this goes is the, yeah, you're right, Ben. That's what makes it fun. The demand is coming from Oracle, which is coming from Open AI, which is coming from Nvidia, which is coming from Oracle, which is coming from Open AI, which is coming from a video. Didn't we say at the end of August that September was historically one of the weakest months of the year?

You know, I tell you what, I don't know how the seasonality stuff works. Like, what's a historically good month or bad month? You tell me. Well, you wouldn't. I'll tell you. September historically is not great. Okay. 3.5% in 2025.

Fourth best September since the turn of the century. Okay. Not bad. I tell you, seasonality doesn't do much for me. Yeah, I can take it a minute. I'm not going to lie. All right. Todd Stone has a chart showing a table.

The annual contribution for the S&P of the 10 largest stocks during positive years. and 2021, 2020. Wow, this is, this is very surprising. I don't remember anyone talking about this in... 20203 and 2025 are all... It is funny that 99, 2007, which are the tops, but I don't remember anyone talking about this in 2007, that it was 80% of the total almost.

Well, this is before you had a podcast. True. But obviously, you look at these and you go 99, it was the top, 22, 2007 was the top. 2021 was the top, and then there's other years you can look at and say, well, those ones didn't matter. All right, here's a chart that was making the rounds this weekend. The forward PE of the S&P, cap weighted versus equal weight.

And needless to say, maybe not be this to say, they generally track each other pretty closely. There was a huge disconnect during the dot-com bubble, and there was a pretty big disconnect today. Yeah, not nearly as wide as the dot-com bubble, though, obviously. Okay. So long, short S&P, long equal weight. Sure, maybe.

But I feel like the people that are posting, the people that are posting this chart have literally been saying the same thing since 2015. Yeah, they were pounding the table on Cape ratio back then. Okay, awesome new chart from JPMorgan. They had their new guide to the markets. I can get an email every time a new one comes in. And this chart has never been here before.

They look at the top 10 names going back to 1985 every 10 years. I'm pretty sure J.P. Morgan stole this idea for me because I did it before. Not to brag. I'm kidding. But they show which ones have stayed over time. And you can see there's a total turnover from 85. There's a few of them that hung on for a little bit. IBM hung on there for a little bit.

GE hung on. X on. And there's no names that were in the top 10 to 95 that are still there. today. So there's been a ton of turnover between now and then. And Microsoft is the only one that was there in 2005. So here's the thing, though. I feel like since 2017-ish, when these tech companies really started to take off and their dominance was becoming more well-known, the one thing people would say is, listen, just wait until the government steps in and breaks these companies up. I think we've learned the government is literally, they can't do that, but they

don't want to or it's never going to happen. These companies are too big and powerful for the government ever to step in and break them up. And I think that at one time seemed like a real risk. I just can't imagine that happening today. Can you? Can you see that? No. Yeah. You've got to sell off YouTube. You've got to sell off called services. They're too big and powerful. So it's going to be their hubris or the next in 2035 it's going to be a bunch of robotic companies or something else that comes up to take their place. But it's not going to be because the government steps in to take away their power.

Obviously, their power is just growing. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that there's going to be a lot of turnover just because there has historically. Okay. I'm going with history here. You don't think that there's going to be some robotics companies that are going to step in and new AI companies.

And that's the way that this stuff works. Historically. Some of these companies are going to trip and fall. That's going to, that's, Okay. Sure. Maybe this time really is different. I'm not pounding the table, but I would say like even money. How long are we talking about? We're talking about 20, 35? I think that the historical turnover rate is something like 30 to 40 percent.

So three or four names. I would say the historical turnover rate is going to be way less today, way less in the future than it was historically. I would feel pretty comfortable saying that. I think we could, so we'll talk about this in 2035. in year 17 of our podcast, but I still think that two or three of these names are going to trip and fall and something else is going to come in or something else is going to take their place. All right, well, two out of ten is not, I mean, that's nothing. Two to three.

I said that's like historically, 30% or so is average. All right. Great stuff from Rob Anderson. NASDAQ 100 has not seen a 3% correction for 115 days. It's the seventh longest streak going back to 1971. So since April, essentially, then. You know, for all the bubble talk,

I thought this is interesting. U.S. equity gains trailed the rest of the world, this in Bloomberg, by the most since 2009. How do you explain this? There's a lot of really weird stuff going. I keep saying, this is a bubble. It's a weird, just whenever. Gold hits a new highs every day, it seems like.

Bitcoin hit new highs. It's just everything. international stocks you saw Japan is ripping this morning. Yuri and Tim were tweeted, strong technicals are confirming the bullish fundamentals. Finally, non-U.S. equities have a reason to mean revert after being left debt for over a decade. He's got another chart showing like the payout ratio and how these companies are taking a page of out of our book. It's global, man. It's not just us.

If you're not making money this year, you should just retire for being an investor. Hand the keys over, turn them in, put it all in index funds or something else. If you can't make money this year, you're never going to make money. That's true. All right. What's the similar we got, then? All right. Let me hear you think here.

It seems like other famous bubbles are accompanied by an anecdote of someone completely ignorant of the investment making an investment. Darwin with Railroads, Joe Kennedy allegedly said, when the shoe shenner asked about the market, he threw in the towel. What feels different about the AI is that there really hasn't, doesn't seem to be a lot of stories while people with zero idea about AI or the market, just running and throwing life savings at AI names. People investing in it are doing so in a fairly. rational manner through indexing or for the most part ETS. Thoughts. Yeah, I reject this dramatically. Dramatically. I agree with it like 70, I'm like

75% of the way there. It doesn't feel like this is 99 where people are quitting their job to day trade or quitting their jobs because they're going to turn over houses, right? And I'm going to buy and sell houses and I'm going to fix them up a little bit and resell them. Those are the kind of things that are happening in those bubbles. It doesn't feel like we have that kind of stuff happening today.

The anecdotes of, I will give him that point. Let me present the counterpoint. Hamptonism, at Hamptonism, tweeted, I'm convinced anyone with any level of education can turn 100K to half a million and 12 months. Bucco Capital, we tweeted it and said, we're close at the top. It's okay to keep dancing, but recognize where we are. Here's another one. Oh, this is from Martin Screlli.

Let me share my screen for a second. This is a fake. There's some SORA, which we'll talk about in a sec. Here we go. I have a dream that all overvalued stocks will collapse and the market will be efficient once again. Not bad, right? Okay.

So wait, hold on, hold on. I'm not done. All right, here's another one. Somebody, I don't know if this is Reddit. It looks like Reddit. After two months of thinking, I decided to quit my job today. They show their portfolio. Feels good, but I thought it was.

I was wrong. TikTok investors tweeted, everyone is a genius in the bull marks. This person talks about their strategy and trading. We've got 19, this is from bespoke. We've got 19 stocks up 400% since Liberation Day low. And let's see, all but four of them are money losing companies. Cipher mining. I don't know, Codiak Sciences, Oclo.

We've talked about tango therapy, a bunch of other names. I've never heard of. We've got, this is from Deutsche Bank. I've never heard of any of these companies before. Okay. I love how they have the P-Ratio and like 90% of them are negative. Yeah. Right?

They don't have a profit. That means they don't have a profit. So going to the retail thing that we've been talking about, how these people are just killing it. Sherwood had a chart showing the Goldman Stock Retail Indexes off like 19 straight days. I forget what number is, but it's madness. All right. So Deutsche Bank has this wonderful.

chart showing the performance of the most shorted stocks going vertical and the stocks with the most net call volume going vertical. And let's just say that these are both retail names. You've got the defiance company launching a bunch of three X ETFs. Modest proposal tweeted factor effectiveness, the recent 12 months comparison to long-term performance. We're looking at the best versus worst quintile. So I guess this is long short. what's number one, high nine price month momentum, high 12 month price momentum, high R&D

to sales, high beta, and the worst is all like, you know, value stocks. Mike Zucardi tweeted the last six months have been all about low quality, the junkier, the better, Auger Infinity has a chart, which he's showing the S&P 500 performance since the lowest versus the non-profitable tech stocks, non-profitable tech is up 105% since the lows. the Rigetti stuff that I spoke about earlier. So, Ben, it's happening. People are going absolutely bananas for stocks. So, yes, it's happening.

When I was in my manager selection days, those portfolio managers would definitely have said, listen, this is a junk stock rally. We're not going to chase the junk. We're high quality, balance sheets, low debt. It is. It is. Okay. So here's the other place where I think that there is a,

I hate calling everything a bubble because at a certain point, know how all the Gen Z kids, they say that everyone is a goat, you know, like, hey, this person at my company, they're a goat. Like, you can't call everyone a goat. Not everyone's the greatest of all time, okay? Stop using, stop using goats so much young people. Like, it's reserved for like one or two people, and you're like, that's it. So I don't want to call it's a bubble, but it's, we're at all time highs and we've never been higher. There are so many rich people now. And you and I are in a very, I think you and I are in kind of an interesting way to view

this because not only through our business, but because of all the people we hear from, that there's never been so many rich people as there are right now. And it's funny because the conversations that I'm having with really rich people in our day job, the biggest problem they have is what do I do with these huge capital gains I'm sitting on? That's the problem people are trying to to solve for. And that's obviously a bull market problem and phenomenon. But I just think that there's just, there's never been more rich people. And I think that explains so much of what's going on. Well, let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. The B word, the bubble word. Stocks, these stocks, we've been discussing, the one, I mean, meta and Nvidia fell 70% to 2022. Amazon and Google

got cut in half. I don't remember a lot of people saying, see, the bubble is over. The bubble just popped. My point is, what would have to happen for us to say, you see, it was a bubble. Because it's not these stocks falling 40% and getting back to where they were in 2023. That's proof of nothing. That's proof of all right. Yeah, these stocks were overvalued.

A bubble bursting means invidia's got to go to a trillion. It would mean that the S&P would have to fall 40% and the NASDAQ 100 would have to fall 50. I think that's, to me, that's, okay, it was a bubble. So if the NASDAQ doesn't fall 50, get out of here. The NASDAQ could fall 35%. It means nothing. It fell 35% in the first quarter, didn't it?

And in 2020. And in 2022. Yeah. That's fair. I don't know. I don't know where the number is. 50% at a minimum, or don't say the word bubble? I think that's a fair definition.

At a minimum. If handy, put your gambling hat on, what will the odds of a 50% crash be in the NASAC 100? in the next 24 months, 24 to 36 months. If you said 24, what would make me bet on a 50% crash over the next 24 months? I don't know, man. You need a really high plus odds. Plus 700?

How about this? Oh, I would need way higher odds than that. All right. For you to put, I don't know, 10 grand, 10 to 1? Yeah, at least. Actually, you know it? If anyone's willing to give me 10 to 1 odds, I would take it. That's a good payout.

Okay. If you extend it to like 48 months, then I would say 7 to 1. 50% is a lot. And now it could. That's what I'm saying. It could happen. Of course it could. Yeah.

But what is the level we're going from, to your point? And what does it bring you back to? Well, that's the other part of it. It's like, listen, where's the S&P? Is it 60? Ooh, is it 60. What is it? 6,700.

Okay. So if the S&P goes to 8500 and it goes back to, down to 6,000. Who cares? Sam Rowe had a great point the other day on Twitter that the Dow bottomed at like $6,700 in the great financial crisis. Now it's at 46,000, almost 47,000. And now the SEPs at 6,700.

Round numbers. All right. This is a good thing. It goes to the retail stuff that we're talking about, but you love to see this. The value of equities held by the bottom 50%. And this is all Robin Hood, so credit to them. This started to go vertical in 2020. So in 2000, it was 175.

This is also the pandemic, though. This was the pandemic. People had disposable income for the first time, a lot of people for the first time in a long time. But the bottom 50%, the value of equities, I got nowhere from 2000 to 2020. So 20 years, not inflation and justice, I don't think. And now it's 600 billion. Now there's a denominator thing in here.

Like, I don't know how many people this is. But nevertheless, this is still a good thing. No, the jump here was so high. that this is just, but here's the thing. To me, 9% inflation was worth this. We don't get, we don't get this without 9% inflation. Was it worth it? I don't, I don't have to think about that. Because it was all the money we sent to people that that's why this happened. Yeah, I don't know. That's a, that's a big, that's a big question. I think that's a reasonable tradeoff as far as I'm concerned. Okay, let's add one more thing to your bubble thing. This is from the Wall Street

Journal. Yield premiums, corporates over treasuries, is at a 27, year low, the spread. Wow. And the quote from the article was, it's kind of the old spreads are tight, but yields are all right. So yields are high, so people don't care. They're buying corporate bonds hand over fist. So they're not requiring much of a spread.

So same with junk, too. So there was another journal article talking about this. And Howard Mark said, and this is definitely true. It just is. The worst loans are made at the best of times. Yeah, that makes sense. Right. Okay, I want to, so I feel like that to me, they're starting to get a ground swell of inequality stuff.

I feel like the inequality chatter is, well, it's growing. So here's a question for you. So because I look at the Atlanta Fed now, and again, it's like 4% for this quarter, they're not all seeing, all knowing, whatever. But let's say we get a slowing labor market, right? And it doesn't really impact the economy. People start losing their jobs, but the top 10% controls 50% of consumption. I think the top 40% controls 60, 70% of consumption. AI makes businesses more efficient.

Okay? So parts of the economy are slowing, but the economy, or the labor market are slowing, but the economy still does fine. You mean like what's happening literally right now? Yes. Let's say this continues.

Is your strategy to buy torches and pitchforks? Because look at this one phone. I don't want to go there. Listen, I'm living in the world as it is, not as I would love it to be. Wait, hang on, hang on. Hang on. This idea...

Look at this next chart. Okay. Look at this next chart. This is from charter today. America's top 1% holds almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%. The bottom 90% holds 33% of wealth. The top 1% owns 31. It was 10% and 40% in the 1990.

Forget about the top 1%. This is... It's Elon and Larry Ellison and Bill Gates and Steve Bomber and Jeff Bezos Like, this idea that it's only the billionaires and everybody else is screwed, I'm sorry. I just, I reject that idea. Listen to what the companies are saying about their consumer. They have no reason to not tell the truth. I feel like we're beating this dead horse.

No, I agree. But listen, if, listen, if you are boxed out of buying a house right now and you live in a very expensive city and inflation feels higher and, and I don't. know what percentage of the population. Let's say 33% of the population because 62% of people own stocks, the homeownership rate in this country is 65%. So let's say a third of people are boxed out. And some of them do that by choice. So let's say it's really 20% of people are boxed out of the stock market and the housing market. Who do you think they're going to blame for their plate? Listen, I'm not denying that there are people struggling. Obviously, there

are. And I'm not insensitive that. I just feel like we're spending too much time on that topic as a society. It's like we're only focusing. There's so much good, there's so much good happening in the world. And it's very easy to feel like there's just a lot of bad things happening because there are and we're more aware of it.

But there's a lot of good things happening. I was in the airport today at JFK, one of the busiest airports in the world. And guess what? It's not all billionaires in there. But here's the thing. It's never been easier to look around you and see wealth extravagantly on social media

and in news stories. Yeah, well, I agree. Well, guess what? But we don't need to contribute to that on this podcast. All right. I told it. I'm living in the world as it is. No, no, no.

No, you're living on social media world as it is. Because listen, AI is going to make wealth inequality. Wealth inequality is going to be supercharged in the next decade. You watch. Short of like nasty market crash. Outside of social media, this is not a topic of conversation. Wealth inequality? I don't know, man.

It's going to be. You wait. This is going to be a big thing. in the coming decade, this is going to be a huge issue. You watch. All right. It sounds like you sound like you're rooting for it. Dude, what do you mean?

Wait, hold on. What do you mean? It's going to be an issue. It is an issue. It is an issue. I'm not saying that it's not. It is an issue. But do we ever focus on the positives or we only get to focus on the negatives?

Hey, listen, I, you're right. I try to be a positive guy. I will, listen, I think the fact that so many more people want to want to be on that. So easy. It's so easy to focus on the negatives. And it's, I'm over it. Sorry. All right. I've got, I got something for you that and later in the show. I'll say it now. How is this? This is me trying to contribute positively. I think a personality trait, and this is true probably of people on social media or more middle-aged people, is my personality is I don't like popular things, right? So they hate on anything that's popular. And my daughter was telling me,

She hates this because she's a, she's a Swifty. She's a big Taylor Swift fan, and a lot of, I feel like middle-aged people are saying, oh, Taylor Swift doesn't another album? Oh, great. It's awful. Have you heard the lyrics? And I'll tell you what, I was in the car with my daughter for an hour on a way to go to a soccer tournament this weekend. And we had to listen to the whole time because that's what we do.

And I nod to my head a few times. It's not bad. I feel like if your whole thing is like things that are popular are not good, that's not a personality trait. That's just being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. How's that? I'm saying neutral or Swift album, not bad. That's my contribution to positive thinking for this week. How's that?

Let's go positive. Okay. So a lot of people have wondered why is it that the stock market hasn't cared about tariffs at all? There are no tariffs on the stock market. How's that? This is Joey Politano from Apricetus. He has this cool substack. He said the single largest exemption for tariffs covering an astonishing $34 billion of imports per month

is for computers and parts, an exemption that AI companies are now completely relying on for the record-breaking investment push. So he shows the largest tariff exemptions. It's like there's Mexico, Canada, pharmaceuticals, energy, precious metal, smartphones, and computers and parts are way at the top. And he says that's a big part of the growth. So he said large parts of the U.S. economy are totally dependent on this tariff exemption, exception for computer imports.

And so his point is, if free trade is delivering such amazing results for the one sector still able to enjoy it, why are we subjecting farmers, manufacturing, and families to protectionism. In other words, if data centers get to be exempt from tariffs, shouldn't we all be. Which I think is a fair point. If we're going to like let, and it's a good news that they decided to exempt all the AI stuff because it's helped the economy. It's helped the stock market. But maybe we should just not have them at all. How's that? Sure. Right? Works for me. Ben, I saw that Apple, I think, I didn't read the, I didn't read the story. So it was something about the Vision Pro.

And then, like, maybe scaling back their efforts to making a smaller, lighter, better version of it. How long did you have it for, like a week? A week? Before you get rid of it? Yeah. I mean, that thing just bombed, right? There's, like, one guy who worked to his wedding, and does anyone still use it, do you think?

Ooh, to your wedding. Tough scene. Anyway, Zuckerberg is really making a push for the glasses, not like the goggles, the glasses. And G. Monster had a piece. He said, they're investing $100 billion into these technologies. God, I hope these things bomb. So he said, I believe glasses will take about five years to gain traction. And once there, this technology should become central to consumer spending.

And there's a picture of Zirkeba with the glass. I just, I don't think, I don't think so. I think society will reject this. I hope so. I really hope so. I don't have a lot of faith in society in the short run. But the ability to just videocampes, videotape someone with your glasses and not have them know it, I think is so creepy. I don't think the upside outweighs the downside on these things at all.

I agree. There's way too many creeps that are going to use these things. But here's the thing. So if you want to have a cynical view of AI, so Open AI and Facebook both said they're going to roll out these AI social media video platforms. So the SORA is the new one. And I think that these companies are just better off the dumber we all get, and that's how they make money.

Like, do you really trust Mark Zuckerberg to bring goodness for you? from AI into the world, or is he going to use it to make us watch Slop videos and get mad about stuff that didn't actually happen to keep eyeballs in his social media platform? Like, I have zero faith that he's going to use AI as a positive for humanity. I think he's going to extract every last bit out of us and try to make us dumber so he can make more money. Yeah, let's put a pin in this. There's some social media stuff later on the show.

But yes, I agree with you. All right. So Josh had the privilege of interviewing Peter Lynch last week in Baltimore. Boston, which was quite a treat. And one of the things that, so Josh did this thing where he read a lot of his greatest quotes and had him react to them. And I had forgot, I had forgotten how many amazing quotes were attributed to him. My favorite bit of all time, that's his is selling your winners, which guilty, I've

done this way too many times, selling your winners and buying, adding to losers is like pulling out your flowers and watering the weeds. How good is that? I was always pretty partial to the refrigerator one, too. What's that one? Oh, yeah, yeah. Just that people do more research on them buying a refrigerator than they do on the stocks that they buy. You know, I saw, he did that, he did that bit for me in the green room.

It was pretty cool to say. He's playing the greatest hits. Yeah. And the P.E.F. Costco, going back to the start of the 21st century, was around 20. It's been around 20 between 2000 and 2020. And then it just exploded higher, got as high as 60 earlier in the year. And I went on on wide charts. I'm like, what's going on here?

Is we getting margin expansion? Is that the deal? So the top is gross profit margin? Nope. About 10, 12 percent. Been that way forever. Look at operating margin, bottom line profit margin. Nope, 3%.

So it's like, all right, well, let's look at the membership revenue. And yeah, this is going higher and this is pretty much close to the bottom line. It was $2 billion in 2016. It's now up to $5 billion. But so what. I mean, it's a giant company. So I went on all of the different alums. I went on Anthropic and ChatsyBT and Gemini and they also have the same thing.

And there's Chachybti. Yes, the P.E. multiple for Costco has expanded materials. really, but it's not solely or even primarily because Costco is suddenly massively more profitable. Rather, it's a combination of modest margin tailwinds, emphasis and modest, growth in e-commerce, international on scale, the strength and stability of the membership model, a premium multiple for perceived defensive qualities, investor rewriting dynamics. And they all said the same thing. There was nothing there that was like, oh, I get, okay, this makes sense. It just has been levitating for reasons that are, I'm sure somebody knows why.

I don't know why. Okay, that's good. So no one can answer the question either then. All right. I think it's just sometimes there's a re-rating where people just, all of a sudden, investors realize that, remember Apple had this re-rating their P.E. ratio. Yeah. But 50 for Costco?

It does seem, it seems a little, a little high. Have you been there on a Saturday or Sunday before? Well, it's the worst place on Earth. How about this? I'm still, open door is up. How much is it up from the lows? Is it a thousand percent or something on it? It was 85 cents when he first tweeted about it, give or take.

Okay, so now it's almost $10. Okay. Wow. So it's a 10-bagger, more so. The Wall Street Journal had this piece on it. They said, for all the recent excitement, a crucial problem remains. The economics of home flipping business don't scale. Expecting open door to figure them out now represents a triumph of hope over experience.

Oh, yeah. Guess what, asshole? It's up 15% today. Shove it. I tend to, unless they completely change their line of business, if they're going to stick with house flipping as their strategy. strategy because it says that for the first half of 2025, it had $227 million of gross profit on $2.7 billion of revenue. This is a low margin business. And I, to me, it's a

prove it thing. If you've got to prove that technology can fix the real estate market, I got to see it first. And again, unless they totally pivot their business to doing something else, I don't see how this house flipping thing ever works at scale. It's up 15% in the last three months. Holy cow. I just, I don't understand. Well, yeah, they've got new people coming in, but I don't see how the business itself. I don't see how it works. It's never worked to come in, right? I don't know anything about its business.

My default would be this is tricky, but I just don't know. Housing is the one place technology has not been able to supplant. Right? It hasn't been able to work at all. I'm going to have to see it to believe it. Maybe it'll happen someday, but it has not happened yet. All right. Speaking of the housing market, it is normalizing.

This is from Lance Lambert and Resi Club. What do we mean? All right. 21 of the nation's 50 largest metro area housing markets in September 2025 had more active housing inventory for sale than in September 2019, up from just 13 of 50 in September 2024. So in 40% of the largest metro areas, there's more houses for sale now than there were in 2019 pre-pendemic.

So this is, it's actually kind of happening a little bit. Bloomberg had this chart where they show the inventory for sale plus or minus August 2019. And it's pretty much just the northeast and the Midwest that we've been talking about. Everywhere else is normalizing and there's more houses for sale. So listen to this. There are now more completed new homes on the market than at any time in the past 16 years for sale. The problem is part of this remains kind of a buyer strike. And I wonder if this is just rates have been so high for so long and so are prices that this normal,

is gone the minute mortgage rates hits 5%. Oh, yeah. So to me, this seems like, yay, things are getting back to normal, but the reason they're getting back to normal is because no one wants to pay up right now for six and a half percent mortgages and higher home housing prices, besides you. Ex-Michael Battenek.

But don't you think that this is a case where, yay, we get normal? It feels like a stalemate to me, where once rates fall, everyone back into the pool. and see you later. Yeah, I agree with that. Right? I don't think this is like the housing market has been fixed.

And I guess the thing about it is, what was I going to say? I lost my train of thought. That's okay. Happens. All right. This is a cool chart. I can't remember where I found this one.

Maybe someone had this on Reddit. It might have been Nick's, Nick McGuilly's blog. The portion of housing units built before 1960, percentage by state. You know, the state with the highest percentage built before. 1960 is. Wow. New York. 53% of houses were built before 1960 in New York.

35% from Michigan. It's going to be a lot of renovation needed in the years ahead. I think this is especially true when baby boomers start dying out of their homes. There's going to be a ton of renovations that are needed for people coming into these houses. On a nationwide, it's like 26%. DC and New York are both overfills. 50%. Those are the two highest. Kind of crazy, right?

Michigan's 36%. Switch, yeah, that's a good chart. Ben, switching gears to the private markets. One of the executives at, I believe, KKR was doing an interview, and she said, there are 19,000 private equity funds in the U.S. There are 14,000 McDonald's. How are there more private equity funds in McDonald's? That's actually crazy, right?

that seems, that doesn't seem right. You know, they did this, they did this for the hedge funds too back in the day. Remember people you say there's 7,000 Taco Bells and 10,000 hedge funds. Where are there more hedge funds in Taco Bells? Can I just, can I call BS? Who said there's 19,000 private equity funds? That sounds made up. No, that's, honestly, that probably is, because every one of these funds has fund one,

too, like, they're funds that are still in existence, right? So that actually kind of makes sense to me. 19,000? Are you're just going on vibes here alone? You just don't, just don't, whoever said of them? Sources I made it up. I'm just saying it sounds, it sounds crazy. All right.

According to Gemini, there are over 18,000 to over 39,000. There's 10,000 private equity firms as of 2020, so it's more now. 10,000? Yeah. Private equity by the numbers. All right. So, there's all that dry powder and you're bearish. There is a lot of

McDonald's maybe. There is a story brewing in the private markets. There's two bankruptcies in the auto space. One of them is called First Brands, I believe, is the name of the company. And the other is, is it a tricolor? Or is that a salad? I don't know. Two auto companies that went cabloy, a lot of off-balance sheet stuff, a lot of private credit things, and is this the canary in the coal mine? I will admit that I am a tourist at best here. With all the dry powder there is, these businesses must have been really, really bad, that they would just let them fail. Because you could think they would just take money from somewhere else to prop them up.

So a man group had a post over the spring, dispelling five myths about private credit. So they're saying, yeah, the market grew out a compound annual growth rate of 17% from 2016 to 2020. It's forecast to grow at 11% from 24 to 20. So it's huge. It's $3 trillion. But they have a great chart showing fixing the denominator blindness. If you look at not an investment grade compared to investment grade, you would say, what's the story here? I don't see anything.

See this chart? As a percentage of the overall market, non-investment grade is pretty steady at, what is that, 30% or so, give or take? Anyway, there's definitely seen some cracks in the market. So some of the companies are getting hit pretty hard, the equity. Blue Owl, for example, which are the ones are not doing well? K. K. K. Harris is hanging in there. Some of them are doing worse than others. But anyway, a lot of the BDCs are getting destroyed.

So, blondes and money tweeted, I don't own any BDCs, but the BDC squad is flashing a warning sign. All names in the toilet this year and a lot of the sponsors BDCs like HSBD are absolutely tanking. So, again, I am ignorant here. I am a tourist at best, but I am in the camp right now that nothing bad happens. Now, I know it sounds topy. I know that sounds complacent. Some of the bad is had two companies went out of business and these firms are hitting. Something bad kind of is happening.

So I bought Aries Capital Corporation, ARCC, that is definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely not investment advice again. Oh, you're trying to catch a falling knife here. I am. I don't know anything. I'm just, I still, I think that, uh, I think that, uh, nothing bad ever happens. Throw this in my face with this is at the top and we have an 80% crash year. I'll apologize. But that's where, that's, that's, that's the mood.

That's the current mood. I'm in the, I don't believe in camp. And there's a lot of people that are like dying, dying, dying, dying, dying for the private credit story to fall apart. I'm taking the other side. Are you blinded by your long-term bull thesis that the R.A. money has to come in here? Maybe. Okay. I just, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't think this is the epicenter of the next credit crisis, which I am stipulated.

It might be. I don't know how to handicap this. I have no idea. This is another one of those things where I would love to fast forward five to seven years to see how this stuff does in an actual downturn. I think it's going to be really interesting to see how it holds up. But hold on. These BDCs have been around forever.

These are not new. I'm not saying the private, how it impacts the private credit. So if private credit returns go from 11 to 9% because there's some defaults, is anyone really going to care about that? No. No, well, I'll tell you who's going to care. The Financial Times, they're going to, they're going to dance on the grave and act like they called it. All right, but if the returns went from 11% to 2%, then people can say, whoa, right?

Correct. Then, then okay, game on. Game on. All right, sports gambling. Survey of the week. This is from Pew Research. A growing share of Americans view legal sports betting as bad for society. Oh, you think?

It's up for 43% up from 34%. percent in July 2022. This is way lower than I would thought. They say only one in ten U.S. adults now say they have placed an online sports bet in the past year. One to ten? That is way lower than I would have thought. One in ten. These names, which I, draft kings, Flutter, which is Fandle, got destroyed last week on news that Kalshia is allowing Parley's, I think.

I think. Wait, so you can parlay, like, who's going to win the Oscar with... I don't know. That sounds very funny. Who's going to be president of Ecuador? Only one in ten. But the growing shares of Americans view legal sports, betting is bad for society in sports. Yeah, you think?

Listen, I love gambling. I love it. I have a lot of fun with it. It's not up to me. But if I could wave a magic wand and end it, I would. Sorry, what? No. You're willing to let wealth any...

quality flourish, but you want to end sports gambling. I see how it is. That's capitalism. I like capitalism. No, I, but here's a thing. No, no, no, because the thing is sports betting is just, it's negative sum. There's nobody really is. And don't email me. If you're, if you want, I'm happy for you. On balance, it is a drain on society. And there are people, there are lots of people whose lives are getting absolutely ruined. And unfortunately, I know, I know people whose lives are being ruined by this. Way more people than their lives are being helped by this. No, we had an email this morning from someone who said that his sports gambling picks

beat the S&P for the last year. Great. He wanted to come on the podcast. It's still not legal in California or Texas. Not yet, but some politician is going to make this an issue. And if this really was an issue that they said at the federal level, we're going to ban sports gambling, you know where there would be a big short, the sports podcasting industry? Because they are so intertwined everyone's advertising.

So the fan dula or draft kings or their pick-your sports book. Every sports podcast right now is powered by sports gambling. That's first level thinking. Somebody would step into fill the void. Okay. By the way, that is weird. I'm in Texas right now.

Can't place any wagers? That's shocking to me. I didn't realize this. I want to lose some money tonight on the Jaguar Chiefs. It's shocking to me that it's not legal in Texas with all the, their whole thing about being deregulated and such. All right. Our friend Gungeon interviewed.

Hey, credit to you for not giving us like your latest parlays of the week there that I don't want to hear about. Nobody cares. I'm well aware. Gunjin at the Washington Journal interviewed Ken Ricky. He is the chairman of FlexJet. He's a billionaire. And he was very candid about how he spends money, very open, how he talks with his family about spending money. I loved it. I thought it was fascinating. And I think she's, hopefully she does more of it because it was really good. One of the things that he said during the interview was he tips $1,000 at a restaurant when he goes to there for the first. time. At a hotel, when he gets to a hotel for the first time, he tips $10,000. Now, remember we

spoke about this a couple of months ago? It was April, and I thought it was really cool to see a guy at the hotel take out $100 or $200 or whatever it was and tip the person. I was like, wow, that's awesome. I want to do that one day. And not, I mean, I could do that $100. I think I could swing that. But Robin had a good take on this. She said, wait, he's not just being generous. He wants something for that hundred dollars and i was like of course so this guy said and and this is fair he tips ten thousand dollars when he gets there and he said if you tip at the beginning they know what your expectations are and i love that he wants to get like he's doing something very very very nice not to show off per se but he wants good service and what's wrong with that and it's phenomenal

Now, I'm a low-maintenance guy. I don't need somebody, like, waiting on me like that as a former waiter myself. I don't need that. But I love generosity. If you're a billionaire, that's money well spent. Right? Hell yeah. I like it.

What is a better purpose of money than making people, like, making people's month, year? I love it. Convenience, right? Okay. On the other side of the billionaires, let's talk about the buying. Now Pay Later stuff. So there was an article in Fortune with the headline. A quarter of U.S. consumers are now financing groceries with Buy Now Pay Later as

Economic Pressure's Mount Service says, I wonder if you would replace that Buy Now Pay Later with credit cards. Yeah. That seems like a nothing burger to me. I think young people are using these as credit cards. Are they not? Is that the story? So from the article, more Americans are taking advantage of financing options for

essential purchases. The latest side of mounting concern. Is it really? one quarter of shoppers have used Buy Now Pay Later for groceries up from 40% who uses a service a year ago. Guess what? Buy Now Pay Later is still pretty early. What if people are just opting for that over grocery, over credit cards? And I will refrain and wait until we hear from these companies on their earnings call because last quarter we looked at this, I listened to a firm and their default. It was like nothing. And they were fine, right? Nothing.

The thing is, you could take my personal budget and say Michigan Man spends and uses credit cards for 98% of his purchases. And you'd think this guy is doing awful. But no, I do it because it's convenient. It's easy. Exactly. I'm getting floated a month-long loan from JPMorgan and American Express for my payments. And they give me rewards in return.

It's a great deal. All right. There's an article in the Financial Times talking about the decline on time spent on social media. So it peaked in 2022. They break it down by age brackets. It's 16 to 24. You're seeing a fairly dramatic decline. And the older you get, it's a little bit lesser so.

And then they show up by geography. So the global average is rolling over. North America, we're still hitting an all-time high, two and a half hours a day almost on social media. I'm only on Twitter on nights and weekends. And I feel worse than ever about it. because during the day, I, thank God, I don't have time for this anymore. So I'm very little time spent it during the day.

But every, I feel, I feel terrible when I'm laying with my kids and I'm on like the 4U tab and I'm doing it at their baseball game. It's, I'm only out on the weekends and I feel it's making, it's making me not happy. I don't like it. Yeah, see, I stay away from the 4U tab for sure. How do I find it happen? Ben, how do I undidict myself? Because I'm really, again, I'm not.

on it during the week, during the day, at all, ever, ever. But a lot of this brain rot, it's, it's, is there any doubt anymore? Is anybody saying social media is like a net benefit or are we, is that charade over? This is a good thing that it's falling. I still find value in it in terms of finding charts and stories and stuff that we use, but I be lying myself if I said, that's the only reason I'm doing it, obviously. No, you're addicted. So am I.

But guess what? You know what? If you just looked at the daily chart book every day and some of the other substacks and Sam, you'd be while taking care of. You don't need to be on social media. This is true. Yeah, no, I've been doing it for way too long. I can't help it.

Okay, this is interesting. This is this one's got Galloway. We talked about the slop stuff earlier. And he said people don't actually want to create content. They just want people to feed it for them. That's where, like, opening eye and Facebook is going to step in and do it. So he says 4% of YouTube videos account for 94% of the views in the platform. 5% of videos on TikTok generate 89% of the views.

And Instagram is saying 3% generate 84%. The top 25 podcasts reach nearly half of U.S. weekly listeners. You know what's interesting? But I'm on Instagram too. And Instagram doesn't make me feel bad. I get enjoyment out of it. I don't feel like the world is ending after I close my Instagram app. See, it's kind of funny.

I don't really use Instagram. But yeah, because it's harder to make the world look bad through pictures. Because that's, in a lot of cases, reality, unless it's AI crap. Is it, is there a simple reason, I haven't thought about this, but I'm sure a lot of other people have, because there's just no sharing.

There's no retweeting. There's no quote tweeting. And dunking on people. Negativity doesn't go viral. It's just, it's just good vibes. I don't know. But anytime a tweet now gets more

than a certain amount of likes, call it 500 likes. I can't believe how many trolls that are coming out of the woodwork to tell you how, awful things are and how terrible. I can't believe. I can't believe you can't believe it. Obviously, that's the thing that's gotten way, way worse than the last five years is just the sheer amount of people who think everything is bad at all times. Or that's the character

they're playing. I don't know. So, story time. I said my daughters are Swifties, so my wife took them to see on Sunday morning to see, apparently there's some Taylor Swift music video thing that's tied to a new album in the movie theater. I think it was the number one movie this weekend by box office. My two daughters and my wife went to see it. So my son, what do you want to do? Let's me and you go do something. And so we went to the zoo. And it was a good reminder about graduating from certain levels in your kids' life that I'd never even thought of that much. When our daughter was younger, our first hour was born, we got a pass to the zoo. And we would go to the zoo. Unless we didn't have plans, we'd go there every weekend. Because it was something

to do. And your kids are really young. And they're still in like stroller age. Right? Let's go to the zoo. She likes it. And we'd go there all the time. We use that family pass so much. And I went to the zoo and my son and I were walking around and realizing we went there on Sunday morning like 1030 in the morning, you know, before the crowds got there and before it was too hot. And I'd say 95% of the people there were parents with kids in a stroller. And oh, look at the end. And it's just, I forgot that, oh my gosh, we totally graduated from that thing. And I never even realized it. And now we're on to the weekends are full of sports games and such. And I was talking, I had to, I had a physical last week, and my doctor was asking, you know, if you go to a doctor or a dentist,

they always ask you, hey, how the kid's doing, right? Every time. And I don't know if they really care. They just want to ask you. But my doctor said, what do you, what's going on to kids these days? So I tell them, you know, we're in it with youth athletics. And we have soccer, we have football, and every day, you know, Monday through Thursday, every day we have a practice. And then on the weekends, we have three or four games every weekend. And he said, God, I'm so glad to be done that. And I think the opposite. I absolutely love it. It's fun. I don't know what else we'd be doing with their time. Obviously, I'd maybe be relaxing more or something, but I think it's so much fun to graduate from that old stroller mentality of you're trying to kill time because you don't

know what else to do until nap time to now you actually have stuff the kids are involved in and liking. Anyway, it's just I've, it was the first time I realized I'm like, oh my gosh, we graduated this. And then I guess the next step is when they become like social creatures in high school and they start they leave you alone and never just never want to do anything with you yeah i see both sides um i hear what you're saying i think you're probably right i'm wrong here but i was so freaking bored at logan's t-ball game the other day and i actually felt like shit um because i was the only asshole robin was home i was by myself and i'm on i'm on twitter on the four you tab and i look up and i'm like why am i torture myself nobody else is on their phone

nobody else the two into the game but I also do what put it on your put in one of your audible books so I'm reading our friend our friend's book

Morgan wrote a new book the art of spending money yeah I got up behind me somewhere too and Morgan's gonna come on our show and talk about it and he was there was one part about like talking about

like what what matters and obviously you know time spent with our family and stuff and he Morgan wrote something about like how much freaking time are we on wasting on social media not to I know it's lame to complain about so whatever forgive me but this my podcast of well you are really harping on this this week huh yeah I yeah I am I come to Jesus moment I think I'm just like peak I got to I got to get off this thing it's just so it's just poison um I don't know what else to say it's just you know what it's a it's a young man's game

young person's game the social media thing it is but we've all aged with it in a lot of Yeah, but I think we've aged out of it. That's what I'm trying to say. What else was I going to say, Ben? You say you're not feeling the sport stuff. Listen, no offense to baseball people. Baseball is, as a parent, baseball is really, really slow. It's really tough.

When my son returned from baseball, I did not think twice about asking him again if you wanted. Are you sure? Are you sure? No. Now, even though I'm bored, I am not, I am never a I can't wait for X. person because I'm very cognizant that, you know, we're going to die, people die early. Oh, yes, right. Yes, I can't wait till this stage. Yeah, I definitely, I never go there. I don't think about that. Um, I'm the same way. The thing is, here's the thing, though, I got to, my daughter

had a game in Lansing, which was like an hour away, soccer game this weekend. It was my turn to bring her, because my wife had to go to my other daughter's soccer game. So, I was in the car with her for an hour, you know? No screens. We, like, we listened to the new Taylor Swift album, but I just got to talk to her for two hours straight. And that, and that, you know, and that, That's the best part, the before and after the games. And I try to have a rule, too, of don't, unless it's positive, there's no constructive criticism or anything for like 24, 48 hours. And usually at that point you forget about it anyway.

So there's no, like, hey, next time in the game you should try this. Like I, my wife and I talk about it, like, none of that. We're not doing that. We're not being those people because that, everyone hates that person who, like, tries to get in and coach their own kid, you know? Yeah. Speaking of aging out of things. So I think we're going to, I think we're going to go to Disney in December.

This is probably going to be our last year. I don't know about that. I'm going in November. I'm going in November, so I will give you all the tips. But I feel like Kobe's eight. No, I've been, we've been to Disney. But, like, there's like a very, like, the boys become, like, too cool for things pretty around what, like 10?

I don't know what the age is. I can see that. My wife and my kids really want to go to Disney again, I got to be honest. This is one of those things that I would like to be graduated out of. You said I don't want to look forward. I love Disney is just, you do. I do. I love it.

Okay. Just not my thing. I hate crowds. I hate waiting in lines. And we're going to probably do the thing where we get the passes and stuff that I'm always going to have that all figured out. I still, it's too much for me. Okay. It's too much. Yeah, I get. No, it's not fair. But we're going over Thanksgiving weekend. All right. So I have one thing. You know, I've been, this has been a lot of a busy part of my life. been traveling a lot, moved houses, Jewish holidays, unpacking, all that sort of stuff. So I haven't really, I haven't watched Black Rabbit or Task in a few weeks.

I just, we haven't, I just been going to sleep every night I get into bed. But I did start to watch one new movie, Ben, because I don't know if you know this, but it's October. You know what that means. Oh, even more horror movies for you?

So for my fellow sickos, there is a new VHS out on Shudder. I only watched the first segment. Ben, you don't have to worry about this. And, yeah, it's sick. Wait, why is it a VHS? No, that's the name of the movie. There's like five or six of them.

It's called VHS. And there's like, it's like home video slash found footage and just completely demented. And VHS Halloween, the most recent one is no exception. I saw the first segment, like I said, it's probably, I don't know, 15-minute bit. And I had to turn out. I said, this is just too much in the best way possible. Just totally demented.

Totally, totally, totally, totally sick stuff. Okay. I finally watched F1 this weekend. And I know I should have seen in theater. It was a very fun movie. It was very stylish. It almost in some ways felt like a, I've never gotten into F1. I know people who watch the Netflix show, like Duncan loves F1.

I know people get up early to watch it and people became big fans I've never been like a racing person so I never got into it so I felt like it did a really good job of bringing me along as someone who knows nothing about F1 it did a great job of explaining it I knew nothing about it

I recognize some of the names I guess it did feel a little bit like a commercial for the sport but I guess that's probably what they're going for and it didn't the stakes of the movie never felt that high it right it just it was a it was just a very entertaining movie

like a very easy watch good clean fun If we're on the edge of your seat, I'm sure being at the theater in the racing parts would have been better, but honestly, on my couch, it was fine. It was, I liked it. In Boston last weekend, there was an F1 bar in, in the seaport, and we did some fake racing. By the way, got to be got to say Boston, great city.

Oh, quick story. So you did the Boston to Austin now, since you're in Austin this week. Boston to Austin. So a friend of ours, I went to go meet him for Bryant. And he gave me his address, church street, I punched it up. Oh, this is great. I've never been to Cambridge. I'm going to go see Harvard and see what's up.

So I took a blue bike there, which is their version of the city bike. It's a, it was a seven-mile ride. So it probably took me like 40 minutes. It was great. It was lovely, beautiful weather. I had a great time listening to team of rivals. And it was just a really, really enjoyable moment. So I call him.

Like, hey, I'm here. I come get you. He calls me, hey, where are you? Like, I'm outside. He goes, where? I'm next to the whatever bar. He goes, you in Cambridge? He said, yeah.

He was, dude, I told you I'm in whatever town. And I'm like, oh. So there's six church streets in Boston. I went to the wrong one. So he should have given you the name of the restaurant or the bar, not that address. He gave me the address in the town. I just, I didn't punch it in the town. That's hand up.

All right. I got one more thing on F1. You and I talked about when we saw Gavin Rousdale, He's 60 years old And man, it's still a great looking guy Brad Pitt He's like 61, isn't he 62? He's still got the fastball man

All right, I did finish Black Rabbit And I don't know how far you are into it I'm only on episode 4 It's one of those shows That makes you very uncomfortable Because bad things keep happening And you're like, now this is going to happen Oh, now that's going to happen

Now this, like The whole show is That's my type of show Okay, is just things constantly going wrong and nothing ever going right. And to me, I get very uncomfortable with that, but then you want to know how is they going to end?

How are they going to, how are they going to wiggle the way out of this? And I thought, like, the ending was, it was fine. It was a good show, good and not great. Like a seven, not an eight, I'd say. I enjoyed it. And my wife and I, we binged it pretty quick because we wanted to know what's going to happen. Finally, you mentioned the, I'm saying,

I'm not going to sports games and doing the 4U tab like you, sicko. I bring my son an hour early for his football games so we can warm up and by the way, we're listening to rage against the machine on the way to his football games getting pumped up, which is pretty great. He's like, hey, put that stuff on again. I liked it. So I put some earphones in and I put my audible on it

and I walk around, you know, the school campus a night. And so I've been listening to the Hamilton when I'm almost done to it finally, which is really, really long. Probably wait, just way too long. Listen, Ron Chernow, great author. Way too long. Just cut 40% of it out. But the stuff

that people write in all biographies when they describe a person from the olden times. It all sounds the same. He was a barrel of Justin man. Yes. He had a bulbous nose and rosy cheeks, a pointed chin, and you kind of go, who cares? I don't care what he looks. They're all kind of

anyway, that's what you get in bag. All right. Ben. Anyway, great stuff in that book. It's not our fault, but can we try and make a pact to do an AI-free episode next week? Now, listen, we didn't make the deal with OpenAI and AMD. Like, I don't, I'd love to talk about something else.

We're in the midst of a mania. Why do you want to talk about anything else? I feel like it's a lot. I feel like the audience is bored. Frankly, I'm a little bored. This is, you said, this is potentially one of the biggest stories of this century. And you want to just, I don't want to sweep anything under the rug. Can we, I just want to, could we maybe take a week off?

Maybe. All right. If, if, we won't debate whether it's a bubble or not. How's that? Yeah. Okay. Listen. All right.

That's fair. Last thing. Can we just, let's choose a little bit of positivity. I want to put, I want, I want people to finish our episode feeling like this is the not for you tab. I want people to feel good. I know there's a lot of really ugly shit happening in the world. There always has been, unfortunate there always will be.

The world is a dark and scary and dangerous place. But I feel like people don't come to us for that. And I just want to put out goodness. That's all. I put the good, I put the good news of the week heading in here. I want you to fill it up for next week. How's that? That's your homework.

Hey, these hats at Idonshop.com, I believe they're sold out at the moment, the compound hats. They are going to be coming back soon, right? For those of you who are listening, Ben just put his hat on. They're coming back soon, and these are the trucker hats with the compound. People love them. They're coming back soon. Hopefully, Nicole will let us know, and we'll let you know when they're back. But they're sold out around because people love them.

Idonshop.com for all your merchandise needs. I was passing out the animal spirits coosies to my friends The dad's at the soccer game the other day That went over well Those are fun All right Send us for email Animal Spirits at the compound news.com

Thanks to the production team as always Michael's been filming in different cities every week It seems like And they're dealing with his spot of the internet And everything else So thanks everyone for listening And we'll see you next time Okay.